Delhi’s Very Own Secret Supper Club

At a restaurant in London, your dining experience takes place in complete darkness. Served by blind waiters, the meal challenges your sense of taste and smell. At a restaurant in New York, you are served Sushi by waiters who are skilled ninjas. In New Delhi, this group decided to play on that one key feature that entices crowds of the capital city- exclusivity. Passwords, secret codes and anonymous emails tell the diner where and when to meet and eat. Sick of the monotonous cafe culture, there is a constant unrest to try something different. The idea of secret dining is slowly gaining recognition and feeding to the need of the hour. Aided by social media, secret dining clubs are steadily finding regular patrons on Facebook. Shunning publicity, being picky about patrons; they let you into their inner ranks. One of the best known is the Delhi Secret Supper Club. It organizes “Secret Suppers” at several interesting locations through the city. The organizers came up with the idea after attending a secret supper in Paris and returning home to find themselves tired of the social scene in Delhi. The guests at the events are a mixed bunch from teachers to techies to restaurant owners, and part of the fun of the evening is the the game to try and figure out why the certain bunch has been chosen to dine together. Diners are picked keeping certain attributes in mind – maybe because of their sense of humour, profession, or maybe their passion for food. The organizers, who choose to remain secret, invite who they think are interesting guests, who are then informed via Facebook or email of where and when the secret supper will take place. Sometimes, this penchant for secrecy reaches such a point that cheeky passwords are reportedly required by members to gain admittance. The objective of the evening, as the hosts admits, is to put perfect strangers in close proximity to one another. When asked about their anonymity, the secret organizer said,

“We are hush because we feel everything in the city is just so hyped up! To some serious obnoxious levels, and we want to challenge that, but we also keep safety in mind, hosting the dinners at crowded restaurants and allowing guests to leave when they like.”

Getting invited however is not as easy as writing in, you need to say why you want to go and who you are, and if they like what they read, you get asked to attend their “social experiment.” Interested diners can also email them a personal description on delhisecretsupperclub@gmail.com and keep your fingers crossed.